Shares in Whole Foods Market Inc. (Ticker: WFM) are on the move today, up 3.5% at $39.83 in the final hour of trading. The move in the price of the underlying sparked heavy trading in options on the high-end grocer, with volume topping 54,000 contracts versus average daily volume of around 17,000 contracts for the name. Most of the activity is in WFM calls, driving the call/put ratio to 5.0 at 3:00 p.m. ET.
Volume is concentrated in weekly calls set to expire ahead of the Labor Day holiday weekend. The most traded contracts are the Aug 29 ’14 40.0 strike calls as some strategists appear to be positioning for the shares to push above the threshold by expiration. Premium on the 40.0 weekly calls has exploded as shares hover just below the $40.00 level, with premium rising from just $0.03 on Tuesday up to as high as $0.33 per contract this afternoon. The Sep 19 ’14 call options are also seeing heavy trading traffic, as are the Oct 17 ’14 call options at the 40.0, 42.0, 43.0 and 44.0 striking prices. As of the time of this writing, shares in Whole Foods have just burst through $40.00 and have jumped to $40.21, the highest level since August 5th.
Chart – Two-day chart of Whole Foods
